


Choking Hazard

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Macrophilia, Mild Language, ish, pocket people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 08:56:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3844918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara Oswald is approximately five inches tall. Clara Oswald has not always been approximately five inches tall; this is a recent development.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choking Hazard

**Author's Note:**

> For Kendrixtermina, who prompted: A discussion of Clara's footwear prompts Twelve to offhandedly use the term "napoleon complex". Banter, Hilarity and/or cuteness ensue

 

Clara Oswald is approximately five inches tall. Clara Oswald has not always been approximately five inches tall; this is a recent development. Generally speaking Clara is five foot two, five-eight in her most dramatic heels. Short, yes, but not tiny.

She’s not particularly happy about the fact that she’s currently tiny. Granted, there is a part of her filled with childish glee at how enormous everything is. Like something out of a storybook about anthropomorphic mice, or toys come to life.

But she’s not an anthropomorphic mouse or a toy come to life, she is Clara Goddamn Oswald. So, yes, understandably she’s a bit upset.

It’s the Doctor’s fault, the fact that she’s pocket-sized. Of course it’s his fault.

_If you like shoes_ , he’d said, and this had been an attempt on his part to understand and participate in her interests, _if you like shoes then I have this pair. Special shoes, for people of your diminutive stature_.

She’d pictured some sort of corrective footwear, cyborg monstrosities from the year 3000, but they turned out to be a bog-standard pair of heels. Pink, not really her color, and they had a kind of mother-of-the-bride vibe she wasn’t feeling, but he was trying so she put them on. Walked around a bit, did a little twirl.

He’d grinned expectantly, and kind of blankly, since he hadn’t really grasped Why Shoes Were Important.

Should she start with the history of fashion? The psychological and emotional affects of appearance? A compliment-sandwich surrounding the fact that, while broadly acceptable, these were not shoes she would ever wear out in public? She couldn’t decide. She might have said ‘um’. She might have kept walking in circles, waiting for inspiration to strike.

As dowdy as they were, they did give her some height. An unusual amount of height. She felt taller, genuinely, in and of herself. She felt taller, and then she felt somehow shorter, and then she blacked out.

 

 

She wakes up staring into the bloodshot eyes of a demon. A nose that could inhale her like a vacuum cleaner. Eyebrows, eyebrows like decorative shag rugs. The Doctor, and his stupid enormous face. She looks around, looks down, looks inward for mental fortitude. He only looks huge because she is _five bloody inches tall_.

He reaches out slowly and strokes her hair with his index finger. “Clara. Sorry. Clara, here’s the situation. You’re quite small now.” He’s bothered to remember to whisper, at least.

“Yep.”

“I know you might feel like you need to compensate even more than usual given that you’re the size of a matchbox, but-”

“I’m bigger than a matchbox! Have you ever even seen a matchbox?”

“I’ve forgotten more about matchboxes than you’ll ever know. Regardless. My point is, you have enough of a Napoleon complex as it is, I don’t want to see you descend into megalomania and sheer unbridled rage.”

“ _Napoleon wasn’t even that short._ You of all people should know that.” She is angry, though. It’s deeply frustrating trying to yell at someone when that someone is stifling a giggle.

“Don’t be so literal. It’s a colloquialism, yeah?”

“I don’t appreciate you diminishing my valid responses to your boneheaded antics with a historically-inaccurate joke.” She’s fuming. She’s tiny. She’s fuming and tiny and for fuck’s sake, she probably looks adorable.

“Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t have said that. You’re diminished enough as it is.” He grins. She tries not to grin back, but fails.

He puts his hand down on the floor, palm up. Gesturing with his chin, go on, it’s okay. Tentatively, she steps forward and climbs up, wraps her arms around his thumb.

“I’m still the boss,” she says, as he carries her over to his workbench. “Even if I’m five inches tall. So don’t get any ideas.”

“You could fit on the head of a pin and I’d still be on my knees for you,” he says solemnly, then dumps her into an empty biscuit container.

 

 

To his credit, the Doctor is doing his best to rectify the situation. She assumes he’s doing his best, anyway, going by the racket he’s making and the frantic running to and fro and the frequent checkups to reassure himself that she is, in fact, still there, and hasn’t fallen into a crack.

“Hey,” he whispers, his vast head looming over her. “How are you doing?”

“Wonderful. Never been better. I’ve made a charming foot-stool from a champagne cork and a bed from pocket lint, I look forward to my new life as a fairy.”

Ten minutes later:

“Hey. Are you hungry? I’ve got a grape.” He holds up his thumb and forefinger, between which is delicately pinched one of those teeny sour grapes that are the only things left after you’ve eaten the entire bunch.

And:

“If you want, I could put on the radio. Or the telly. Are you comfortable? I’ve got this bit of foam.” He tucks a small square of upholstery foam into the tin, next to the grape and the Little Book of Calm and the Barbie hair comb and the thimble filled with water.

“Up,” she says. “Pick me up. Now.”

He obliges, curling his hand gently around her, waiting for her to settle in before lifting as steadily as any elevator.

“Closer.”

Eye-to-eye now, ish. She leans out and pets the tip of his nose. “Could you please, please do me a favor?”

“If I can, you know I will.”

“ _Shut the fuck up._ ”

He almost drops her, but it was worth it. He stops pestering her after that.

 

 

Eventually, she stops sulking, mostly because she’s bored. She waves, he pretends he hasn’t been constantly watching, waits a respectable period of time before ‘noticing’ and coming over. She clambers up his coat sleeve and sits down on his shoulder, using his earlobe as a handle.

She contemplates a variety of activities, possibly due to the encroaching hysteria: could she fit inside his mouth? Inside other places? His dick is bigger than she is now. She could hug it. Would that be sexy or just alarming? She’s always liked his hands, he’s got big hands, and now he’s got really really big hands, frottage is a thing, they could -

She crosses her legs. If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that the Doctor has a one-track mind. Whether sex or science, never the twain shall meet.

If he can tell she’s getting antsy, he doesn’t say anything. Just keeps working, soldering, snapping components into breadboards. She takes the opportunity to look at him, really look at him. Up close, he shows flaws, of course. Crows-feet and laugh lines and dry chapped lips, the grey-stubble spot just behind his chin he tends to miss when shaving. But she knows that, accepts that, more than accepts, has come to treasure the human trappings of age he now wears around. And beyond that, she sees - something. A flicker, an uncertainty about the man he pretends to be, an otherness lurking just below the surface.

“You look different.” She rolls awkwardly onto his neck, grabbing fistfuls of skin.

“Obviously. You’ve never seen me from this perspective.”

“No, it’s not just that. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like-” It’s like there’s something _else._

“Like a Time Lord may present as whatever they choose but ultimately will always at least partially exist beyond the constraints of the physical universe?” He’s trying to look at her from the corner of his eye, and trying to look like he’s not looking. He’s smiling that weird secretive in-joke-with-himself smile.

“Is that true, or are you just messing with me?”

“Both. Neither. Now’s not really the time for this conversation.”

“It’s okay. If you’re not - if you look different from what you are, or whatever.”

“You’ve always been able to see through me, Clara Oswald.” He holds his hand up to her, and with admirable restraint does not flinch when she compulsively licks his thumb. “Now. I’ve made a thing. I’m an engineering genius, of course I’ve made a thing. Should get you back to full-size. Well. The size you were before, anyway.”

She rolls her eyes, punches him in the clavicle, then drops down to the table top. “I couldn’t convince you to add another inch or two?”

“It doesn’t do to muck around with the basic facts of the universe,” he says. He’s smiling, that weird secretive in-joke-with-Clara smile, pointing the janky assemblage of wires and resistors and egg-beaters at her. He pushes a button.

She blacks out, and wakes up with the edge of a biscuit tin wedged halfway up her arse. “Probably could’ve planned that better,” she says, extricating herself.

“To be honest, I didn’t plan it at all.” He glances over at the shoes, the inexplicable Magic Shoes, sitting on the staircase. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to do that in reverse? I’ve always sort of wanted to be a wee little man.”

She frowns, considers. “Can you promise me that gadget will work a second time? The universe is screwed if the Doctor is permanently fun-sized.”

“Promise? No. State with an air of confidence that may or may not make you think I’m being truthful? Absolutely.”

What the hell. He could fit in - places, after all. That’s a thing. Right? She nods, and he grins, and runs to grab the shoes, unlacing his boots as he goes.


End file.
